A carpet is an article that is commonly used to cover the rooms' floor and stairs for ornament and shelter. In this sense, there are carpets manufactured completely with nylon fibers but also there are carpets defined as composite materials since they are manufactured in nylon with a bed of PVC which provides strength. The colored and fluffy part of the carpet corresponds to the tissue or upper layer, which commonly is manufactured in nylon, however other materials can be used. These carpets manufactured of PVC and nylon are commonly called modular carpets and they are used in bureaus and places where the transit of people are considered as heavy traffic. Similarly, there are virgin modular carpets and recycled modular carpets, where the virgin ones are those carpets whose PVC layer is 100% virgin, namely, that has not been used or recycled previously. The recycled modular carpets, instead, have already been recycled at least partially once, namely, the used material have been recycled previously. In this sense, in the art is common to identify a virgin carpet of a recycled carpet by the final color of the PVC layer.
The nylon tissue and the PVC are thermally fused, where the PVC bed is commonly located granularly on the rear face of the nylon tissue where the temperature is elevated to a fusion temperature of the PVC, in such a way that the PVC in liquid form is adhered to the nylon to, after some intermedia processes, cool and obtain a final product of modular carpet. In these sense, the fusion temperature of the PVC is minor that the fusion temperature of nylon, in a way that allows the thermal fuse. The temperature of the carpet is raised using furnaces or any similar method. In some cases, the nylon is placed over a base for tissue, where said base is commonly a thin layer of latex, such a way that in the middle of the PVC layer and the nylon layer is located said base.
The success of the modular carpets in the market results in the need of a high demand for raw materials for manufacturing, so there is the need to obtain either PVC or Nylon from any constant source.
In this regard, it has been identified that it is possible to extract the PVC material of the modular carpet already used or as a waste for its reutilization in the manufacture of new modular carpets. In other words, it is possible to manufacture new carpets from either old or used carpets, wherein in order to reutilize the materials from the old carpets, it is necessary to separate the PVC from the nylon in an as clean as possible way.
In the art it has been found that the way to separate the PVC from the nylon is firstly by heating the old or to-be-recycled carpet to a temperature normally higher than 145° C.+−10° C., which facilitates the de-adhesion between materials, so that subsequent and immediately a technician can perform such separation manually, i.e. pulling each layer of material to an opposite side. It is noteworthy that raise the temperature does not have a linear relationship with the manual separation of PVC from the nylon, since exceeding a temperature threshold the separation becomes more complicated because the material is in a semi-liquid or viscous state. In this regard, it has been identified that manual operation reflects uncertainty and/or does not ensure the repeatability of operation, which is desired in order to obtain constant amounts of PVC and/or nylon. For example, the separation is performed with the hands of each technician, wherein the force varies according to the conditions and capacity of each of them. Additionally, it has also been identified that manual separation is inefficient, since once separation is attempted, large amounts of PVC remain on the nylon layer still adhered i.e. resulting in a contaminated nylon layer. Said contaminated nylon layer is discarded, since it is impractical retrying to separate said workpiece because it would take a long time to the technician, and the material temperature at that moment is already lower. In other words, the technique of manual separation is inefficient in the use of resources and the result obtained.
In that way it is desirable obtaining a system, method and/or device or apparatus capable to perform the separation of the materials that comprise a composite material, so that a material is retrieved without contamination of the other one in a fast and/or clean way in comparison with the common techniques, and where the technique is able to be adjusted to different types of materials and/or prior joints for said materials. Furthermore, it is desirable to particularly obtain a separation technique for modular carpets, wherein said technique should provide a clean separation between the two materials, being essential that at the end the PVC is completely clean of Nylon, however it is also desirable that being essential that at the end the Nylon is completely clean of PVC, in both cases, either partially or completely for a piece of carpet or composite material.